


Recipe for a Perfect Day

by 1010nabulation



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Baking, Humanstuck, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Past Drug Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 09:29:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7635055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1010nabulation/pseuds/1010nabulation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gamzee has some good news to share and decides to do so by baking up something nice for Karkat.  Sometimes the best recipes are the simplest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recipe for a Perfect Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inkbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkbird/gifts).



You're pretty sure you have everything you need for what you've all got up and planned to make today, but just in case you went out and bought some buttermilk, plus extra motherfuckin' sprinkles and a great miraculous rainbow of food colorings.

Special as this day is, you've got to go all-out.

Once you get home, you start pulling out all the things you're gonna be needing and piling them all up on the kitchen counter: the cake flour soft as blessed clouds, sweet sugar, nice butter, no less than _three_ perfect eggs, that good bourbon vanilla extract, salt of the motherfuckin' earth, baking powder, the fresh buttermilk you just traded some of your last precious bills on, and for making the best sturdy frosting—the cream cheese, and cream what's nice and heavy, and all your many brilliant food colors. The recipe ain't nothing complicated, yet it turns out the best-tasting fluffy white cake you ever had the good fortune to lay your tastebuds on.

Looking at the clock, you've got just enough time to whip this up before your best diamondbro gets home all weary and soul-tired from his job being the big brother some kids—kids like you were—wouldn't never otherwise have in their lives. Clock is pointing to four, and you know you got about two hours to get this all done. After all he's done for you and how much brighter the world is for his presence in it, makin' him a little something sweet is the very least you can do for him.

Your heart's singing loud and clangorous holy hymns of gleeful thanks as you get down to it, banging bowls and whisking up the dry ingredients first, and you can't help it—some of that mirthful gratitude comes right out your mouth hole. The walls in your apartment building are paper-thin, but you don't care. It's daylight hours yet, so you can sing loud as you please, loud enough to fill the whole of your tiny shared space, your joyous voice echoing resonantly off the walls and right back into your eardrums.

You lose yourself in the simple, pure act of baking, anointing the whole kitchen in sweet spatters of cake batter and creamy frosting, flour and sugar dusting every flat surface. Right now you just gotta let yourself go wild. Today you are so happy you just can't contain it!

Karkat will understand. Even if he acts loud and blustery and mad when he sees what a disaster you've made of the place, you know he'll help you make things right after you mess them up. Like he does every time. You have no idea where you'd be without him... for sure and certain not here, safe and clean and _loved_.

Probably you'd still be on the street, not here sharing an apartment with Karkat. Probably you'd still be rotting yourself from the inside with whatever drugs made you feel hazy and high enough to help you stop caring so hard about being alone, instead of clean and sober the past entire year. There sure wouldn't be cake in your life. There sure wouldn't be any reason to be celebrating like you are.

While you're putting the finishing touches on the cake, getting the lettering just right and adding the last of the rainbow candy sprinkles, you hear Karkat's key jangling in the door. Your nerves are jangling just as much with pent-up excitement.

“Fuck, it smells good in here. Are you baking again, Gamzee?” Karkat asks as he comes in. You can hear him kicking his shoes off and stomping around probably back to his room to put his stuff down.

“Yeah,” you say, trying to sound cool and relaxed and not like you got grasshoppers in your guts. “Got a miracle to share with you, best friend.”

He huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes at you as he comes into the kitchen. Miracles are somethin' he just doesn't get, but he'll humor you most times. Maybe this time he'll feel it too.

“What is it?” he asks.

You hold out the cake and nod your head down toward it, letting it speak for you. You were afraid you'd choke on the words, and the way your throat's closing up you think it was a great idea to spell it out in sweet frosting. It sure was a fuckin' pain fitting all the words on and making it look nice, but you managed.

Karkat squints and gets close enough to read the words on the cake. “Congratulations Gamzee on your First Real Motherfuckin Job.” His eyes go wide and he looks up at you. “You got the job!”

All you can do is grin and nod, too choked up to talk at him yet.

“Gamzee, that's fucking amazing! I'm so goddamn proud of you, holy fuck; put that frosted monstrosity down so I can hug you, asshole!”

As soon as you get your cake settled on the counter, Karkat's in your arms, squeezing the very life right on out of you. You cling to him, hunching down to bury your face in his hair, so happy you feel like you might burst. Karkat is proud of you. You feel like you could fly. All your hardest days, the lapses in your rehab treatments, the difficulty you had figuring out any skills of value you possessed, the long months of trying and trying to find a job, worrying Karkat had put his faith in the wrong place after all and wondering why he kept helping you and never ever gave up on you... it was all worth it.

A sound like a sob but also like a laugh pushes itself up out of your chest, and Karkat hushes you, rubs soft circles into your back and doesn't let go. He's hugging you still, murmuring how good you are and how he knew you could do it, and that he's so fucking proud, and it's all right to just let it all out. You're crying, you realize. Your heart aches, but it's a _good_ ache. An ache like you felt the first time your diamondbro told you he loved you (in that deepest of miraculous friendship ways, pure and bright like diamonds, close as blood-kin).

When you've calmed down enough, Karkat cuts into the cake you made and serves up two perfect slices—rainbow-layered all the way through, fluffy and moist and just sweet enough.

“You know what this tastes like?” Karkat asks you, taking his second bite.

“Mmm?” you hum, licking frosting off your fingers.

“Miracles,” he says, dead serious.

“It sure fuckin' does!” you shout, laughing and laughing. You quiet down when you realize he just called this thing _you_ created a miracle. Your heart swells up in your chest again and you smile.

“It does...?” you say, in wonder.

“It does.” Karkat's voice is firm and warm, and so is his hand as he takes yours up in it. “And the bakery that hired you is now going to be the fucking best in town. I won't buy any other baked goods. Not made by Gamzee? Fuck that. If it's not made of fucking miracles, I don't want to shove it in my face gash.”

He punctuates that with a giant mouthful of cake, chewing with so much determination it strikes your funny bone hard as anything. You laugh so hard it comes out honking, and that sets Karkat to laughing too.

The place is filled with your mirthful voices, and your heart is full of love and sweet gratitude.

There's no denying it. The recipe for a perfect day is simple: Karkat, a little good news, and something sweet. (Second two ingredients are entirely optional if you ain't got anything else good, but that's your own baker's motherfuckin' secret.)


End file.
